Skip to content

Proposal: task metadata (description) + aliases/groups for discoverability at scale #277

@ubugeeei

Description

@ubugeeei

Problem

As task count grows, discoverability becomes a major UX issue.
just provides aliases and groups; it also has strong listing/help UX. Vite Tasks appears command-centric and does not expose first-class description/alias/group metadata in the task schema (based on the public schema file).

Evidence (primary)

  • Task schema appears centered around command without rich metadata fields.

Ref:

Proposed behavior (Unspecified)

  • Add optional fields:
    • description?: string
    • aliases?: string[]
    • group?: string
  • Display description/group in task listing and error messages.
  • Allow running a task via any alias, with clear conflict handling (unspecified).

Use cases

  • Provide “human intent” descriptions for tasks (deploy, release, verify, etc.)
  • Create short entry points via aliases
  • Organize tasks into groups (lint/test/build/release) for large monorepos

Backward compatibility

  • Purely additive; tasks without metadata behave exactly the same.

Minimal implementation suggestion (MVP)

  • Implement description first and show it in listings/output.
  • Add aliases resolution later, then group sorting/printing.

Prior art

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    No labels
    No labels

    Type

    No type

    Priority

    None yet

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions